Unofficial news and tips about Google

July 31, 2009

Remove "On Behalf Of" from Messages Sent Using Gmail

Gmail has a feature that lets you send messages from other addresses. "Gmail's custom 'From:' feature lets you use Gmail to send messages with another of your email addresses listed as the sender in place of your Gmail address. This way, it's easier to manage multiple accounts from the Gmail interface."

A small inconvenience is that Google needs to include your primary email address in the headers and some mail clients inform users that the message is sent "on behalf of" a different address. Outlook is the biggest offender, especially for business messages sent from a a Gmail address "on behalf of" a custom domain.

Some suggested that Gmail should stop including the primary email address in the headers, but that's a major faux pas, since Gmail needs to authenticate the messages sent using its SMTP servers. "The reason we include your address in the headers at all is to help prevent your mail from being flagged as spam by your recipients' email services. For those who want the technical details, we use the 'Sender' field to be consistent with DomainKeys, a commonly used email authentication mechanism. If we didn't do this, your messages may get sent to your recipients' spam folders, which would be worse than the annoyance the current implementation is causing," explains Google.

The solution for this problem is not very elegant, but Google implemented it: you'll need to send the messages using the email provider's SMTP servers. Go to Gmail's settings page, select the Accounts tab, click on "edit info" next to the account you want to edit and then click on "Save changes". For some reason, this doesn't work for Gmail addresses and Google doesn't make the changes behind the scenes.

"We recognize that your other address might not have a server that you can use to send outbound messages — for example, if you use a forwarding alias rather than an actual mailbox, or if your other email provider doesn't support authenticated SMTP, or restricts access to specific IP ranges. For this reason, we've kept the original method as well," mentions Gmail's blog. The original method sends the messages using Gmail's SMTP servers.

96 comments:

Please note that in Gmail Premier they removed the Sender header without need for an external SMTP server.This is a great, now if they deliver mail delegation as announced a few days ago, I'm ready to migrate from Lotus Domino!

The SMTP option doesn't make any sense for Gmail accounts because the messages are sent using the same SMTP server. Probably Google didn't bother to solve the problem for Gmail accounts because most of the complaints involved non-Gmail accounts (custom domains).

Yeah ok, the SMTP option doesn't technically make much sense for other Gmail accounts, but it would have worked to get rid of the "on behalf of" since Gmail has a SMTP server, but Google actively disabled it, that's my problem. The whole reason for the SMTP option is to get rid of the "on behalf of", and now this is fixed EXCEPT for Google's own Gmail addresses. Of course a more elegant option would be possible for Gmail addresses, but Google doesn't offer one and the simple, work-around option they offer for every other Email addresses they have disabled for their own Gmail addresses!

Yeah, it's a shame they overlooked their own Gmail accounts. I use multiple Gmail accounts together and they still show 'on behalf of'. Maybe they'll take care of this soon. Seems like an easy enough fix.

I think it SUCKS that you can't do it with gmail addresses. It defeats the whole purpose of having 1 mailbox for multiple addresses. I still have to log on and off my multiple addresses when I want to send an email. I know someone over at good had to have seen this by now WTF!! FIX IT!!

Note that it will not work for SMTP servers that do not support TLS nor SSL. If you uncheck the use of SSL Gmail will fall back to TLS. TLS can not be disabled, resulting in an error if your server does not support TLS either.

I really, really wish they'd take care of this for Gmail addresses. It's enough to make me want to create accounts using other providers, just so I can manage them through a central Gmail account without all the "on behalf" stuff. Very frustrating.

When is Google going to make the SMTP option (or any other fix) available for multiple Google accounts? How can you LET THEM KNOW they have to fix this??? (or maybe -probably- they know but don't want to fix it? why?)

Google should note that if your password for your SMTP server changes, you may not be able to send mail through that server--and you will never receive an error message that indicates this. A bunch of colleagues missed mail as a result. My university requires we change our email passwords about once a year--a good idea, but don't forget to check your SMTP settings.

Couldn't agree more. I have a two gmail accounts that I use for shopping, and they all forward to my main, central Google Apps e-mail account. If I get lots of SPAM, I can easily close my shopping gmail account and use another. This protects my main account from SPAM. What about e-mail replies? The last thing I want is to disclose is my main Google Apps e-mail address which would happen by sending a reply e-mail from my main Google Apps account, with 'on behalf of' added to the e-mail, disclosing my main e-mail to possible SPAM.

IT is nearly 2010 - This can't be that hard to resolve - We need a solution!

"Your other email provider is responding too slowly. Please try again later or contact the administrator of your other domain for further information"...This is what appears on my screen once I follow the instructions you laid out for me on this help page...any ideas??

Another Petition to allow multiple gmail accounts to send mail w/o the on behalf! I thought it would work since google gives free POP3 access but it doesn't, totally sucks as my main personal account isn't the nicest email address but I want to send emails work from it, occasionally, then it gets the on behalf of

Anyone know where and how we can directly bug them about this? its kind of a big deal

I use multiple accounts on Yahoo and don't have this problem. I would love to move over to Google/Gmail but this is a complete show stopper. Until it is fixed or there is a workable way around it then it is going to discourage people from consolidating on Gmail. Apparently tthe can fix it on the paid for Google Apps, why not impliment this on the free accounts too.BTW, it also appears when using Lotus Notes and not just Outlook.

Created a test account myname@xyz.com on gmailand asked to send mail fron it using an external SMTP server.

Then configured that sever as being gmail...

The header of the mail I received in outlook does of course still mention my original gmail account as "return-path" plus a bunch of spam related "wrong stmtp" etc but the email itlsef when read normally with outlook doesn't display the annoying "on behalf of xyz"...

So you won't be able to "really" fake somebody else's email address, but I guess that'll solve 99% people's problems...

Say I'm smart and I have several gmail accounts (work, personal, blog, ebay, etc) and I have them all forward to a single gmail account, how do I remove "on behalf of" when I'm using gmail? I don't have a separate SMTP server, if I put a gmail email address in it doesn't give me that option, it offers to send me a verification email instead.

We use gmail for our small business and this has become a problem. We do have our own domain but any domain name, even if it's legitimate, is more likely to be flagged as SPAM than an @gmail account, especially if the emails are being sent to other gmail accounts (most our customers have @gmail emails).

Right now we have a gmail account we use for the company and each of us setup forwarding and "reply as" to our personal gmail accounts. Unfortunately it still says "on behalf of" in the email titles, and one of the young ladies here was being harassed by a customer when he used her personal email address to find her facebook and myspace profiles. The problem was resolved and we no longer do business with that individual but still this "on behalf of" nonsense created an uncomfortable situation.

We're now seriously considering google apps but risk our emails being flagged and $50 per person per year is not cheap for a fledgling business. I only hope Google decides to follow their "Don't Be Evil" motto and remove "on behalf of" from forwarded email addresses.

problem is spf checks sender address domain against originating server and dns ip afaik. this is to prevent spoofing. so the only way to get around this would be to use the actual smtp owned by the domain. it does suck though - i don't necessarily want clients to know my private gmail address.

hehe.. find a way to get ride of this "on behalf of"It's very easy..you don't even need another smtp accout for that.do the following.

1. do the same that describt on the top of the blog (see above)2. on smtp server add : smtp.gmail.com on username : "your gmail account" on password : "your gmail password"then check secure connection (SSL)

and that's it ! this way you can use gmail from the gmail website without having "on behalf of"

I found work-around! :-) You can send the original email from Google Apps and use your Gmail email address in BLIND COPY. If you have your apps email as alternative account in your Gmail - the email will be stored in "Sent items". Ecco! IT LOOKS EXACTLY SAME AS OTHER EMAILS SENT FROM CONSOLIDATED GMAIL ACCOUNT. !!!!

David's solution works great, but remember to update the password details each time you change your Google Account password. If you don't you'll start seeing errors like ' 535 SMTP AUTH' each time you try to send an email

Gays, it obvious?!!!Google does not want to "fix it", simply because it is "actively" made this way. When the email is entered it is checked, and if it is a gmail address you do not get the usual page (you get something special for gmail). Google hand "chosen" to do it this way.I think it is mean "we will give you a power over everybody ELSE, but not ourselves".Its time to look for less evilness than google/gmail. Shame on you google, you started better.

What is "David's solution" !!! It is not clear and I never really understood his "1. do the same that described on the top of the blog (see above)" ... there are lots of stuff above ... what did he mean ? Can anybody, please, give easy baby steps?

What on earth is going on? Does "David's Solution" work? And if it does, does it remove the "on behalf of" ... where there is such a contradiction, that it works for some, and not for others (it didn't work for me)?!

I tried the workaround. Cool. The prob is that you need a non-gmail address to label the new account even though you set up the details with smtp.gmail etc because they apparently send the verification code and link to that address.

I think Dave's solution still falls short in totally masking the original email account sender. It does remove the "via XXX sender" but I think viewing the "full header" still shows the gmail account the message is sent from (in the return-path) - at least this is true when the full message is viewed in Yahoo! This means emails to Gmail also have it encoded into the message whether it is immediately available or not.

It is a good surface solution, but for those of us wanting to mask the sending account, it doesn't work.

Google needs to at least warn people about the "on behalf of" when they send the email! On top of that, the sent emails show up as sent from original account in my gmail but when I check the receiver's email, it included the "on behalf of" and the sending email.